R/Mo
"Sharpshooter"
Artemis Au Apollo/Silk Weaver
Expertise: 10+2
Beast Mastery: 6+1
Marksmanship: 12+3+1
Wilderness Survival: 5+1
Marauder's Shot
Melandru's Shot {E}
Savage Shot
Beastial Fury
Read the Winds
Troll Unguent
Favorable Winds
Res Sig/Distracting Shot (AB)
I've discussed it with another longtimer here (he doesn't like it), but we went through some discussion and testing with this. I'll explain the idea with another genre. Say, in an RTS (Real time strategy), you have the infantry, the tanks who deal damage and can take it, with archers in the back, who are more frail, but can sometimes deal more damage due to damage, ease of reaching target/less moving, easier to coodinate attacks. Of course, the fact that you have range units as well as melee means those at the back can continuously attack while having just a bunch of meleers clumped together is a waste of resources, etc.
In GuildWars, Ranger rarely takes up the role of damage dealing, often it's only icing, while interrupts, barragers, traps, and sometimes rituals are what makes them valueble. With factions, this has been slightly changed, they attempted to boost beastmastery and added 2 pretty high damage bow attacks too, so this is an attempt to turn a ranger into a damage dealer.
The idea is that you can deal damage similar to that of a shock axe (I would assume this to be the pinnacle of damage dealing), with a trade off of less durability and no deepwound against interrupts, consistant damage, and ease of reaching enemies/harder for damage to be mitagated. It's much easier to assist a spike when you can reach it instantly too. Below is a bit of testing I did with a typical shock axe. Just understand, in no way is this meant to replace a warrior or any nonsense like this, but to provide an additional source of damage and add variety to the team, making more difficult to counter. Interrupts are always good too. This build would be meant for a TA (ie. 1 war, 1 monk, 1 utility, emo/mez/cripshot, 1 sharpshooter), and perhaps GvG (2 wars, 2 monks, 1 cripshot, 1 sharpshooter, 1 emo, 1 mez).
Without pre-casting vs 60 armor: Shock Axe beats Sharpshooter by 1/2 second (savaged the last shot). I casted Read the Wind in the beggining for this one.
Precasted Favorable Winds, VS 60 armor: Shock Axe has to attack twice more after the ranger's dummy goes down.
Everyone knows warriors are the main damage dealers, but the damage from the ranger is really quite good too. Note that read the wind and spirit can be pre-casted before engagement (although, yes, they will go down), and also that this test is done with the warrior having frenzy on, which means the practical damage will be lessesened.
The ranger has built in IAS as well as very good energy management (expertise and melandru's shot, giving +15 energy with 7 recharge).
I did another race thing, using the AoE grid with 2 adjacent, nearby, and in-the-area targets. We each targeted one of each, and started together. The test we did has no pre-casting (I do not find that fair... since when is precasting illegal, hmmph), so I started off with using Read the Wind and didn't bothere with FW since it's so damned long, and he started slashing those guys. I lost by about 3 seconds.
At the later part of the test, I was unable to spam Tiger's Fury because I ran out of energy. Again, this "simulation" is a bit impractical because in a real game, there are almost definetly enchantments on the enemy team. 1 shot of melandru's would give me 15 energy, enough to use tiger's fury 3 times, meaning that I think, in a practical situation (dummies have no enchants), I would be able to outdamage those 3 seconds the shock axe has over me. Not to mention that I would be able to precast. In a real situation, there are blinds and hexes to deal with, but I think that these damage hates actually give me the upper edge when compared to damage output of a warrior (I can use Read the Wind while I am blinded before the monk mends me, I can take out running characters more easily, interrupts own, etc etc etc)
For the record, the damage is 118 critical against 60 armors using attack skills. The attack skills are used approximately once per 7 seconds. Those who doubt the damage capability, take this and compare to Evis and Exec. How much damage do you get out of the crits? And how often do you get to use them? ASSUMING continuous frenzy, 7 seconds as well, except you cannot have frenzy on when underattack and you don't gain adrenaline if blinded, fled from and crippled, etc, whereas the skills on the sharpshooter recharges even when you don't attack, is kiting, etc.
More output (numerically and practically), but less durable; so that's my little experimental build, hopefully you guys won't hate it as much as my friend does. Tell me what you think.
S
